Backwater Jacks

We had a great time at the newly remodeled Backwater Jacks. Richard was our server and he was on it! Fast with everything and his recommendation for the deluxe Cheeseburger was just what I was looking for. He also recommended the Bloody Mary’s which were on sale. Nice. I like this place and the remodel has made it one of the best places on the lake.

I can understand the mixed reviews, but this is really more of a drinking, relaxing, listening to live music place than fine dining. With that said, our service was attentive and our food came out in a reasonable amount if time. The hummus platter appetizer was huge for eight bucks. My wife loved the Monday night snow crab special. I had the jerk grilled chicken and it was pretty good. Come at sunset on a weeknight to miss the weekend boozers.

The food was fine. I got the blackened grouper filet sandwich, and it was okay. Also ordered at our table was wings, the French dip, and a Caesar salad. Respectively fine, decent, and terrible. Caesar salad was DROWNING in dressing. Not great.
That said, for food alone I’d give Backwater Jacks 3 stars. Fine, not great, but I’d eat there again if I was in the area.
For service, they get knocked down to one. The hostesses were very dismissive. When we sat down, we ordered drinks and an appetizer. The app came out in relatively decent time. We then waited AN HOUR for our food. They weren’t that busy.
Our waitress did come by a few times complaining about the kitchen being slow, but other people were getting their food. I’m pretty positive that she forgot to put in our orders. Which, from other reviews, is not uncommon.
I understand «Lake Time», but it entered ridiculousness. I will not return to Backwater Jack’s.

Fun atmosphere, decent food (I had the snow crab legs), and great service. I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back, but if the situation every came up, I would definitely be ok with it!

Went there for an afternoon drink and early dinner. It was very hot, but we sat on the deck with our little dog. The frozen drinks were very refreshing! I had the pain in the ass, and my husband had a jalapeño margarita.
Then he had the grouper tacos, and I had a grilled chicken salad. He raved about the tacos! The salad was pretty good. The view was beautiful!
It’s been closed for 3 years, just reopened. Give them a try!

Great new space after remodel. We have the hot wings and the Jamaican Jerk wings. Please put some more flavor in the Jamaican Jerk Wings they were almost tasteless but the hot wings were great

Difficult to find, but the food was fantastic! Had fried potato salad delightful and the grouper fingers too, not to mention the rice & beans

My family of 5, including three young children, decided to give this place a chance at the advice of our hotel concierge. I asked for a recommendation for dining with lake views and a kid friendly atmosphere. He was right about lake views, but this isn’t a place for kids. The wait staff wear shirts with the phrase «drink up bitches» and «I know Jack Shit» on them. I would relate this place to a biker bar on water. If you are comfortable with kids in biker bars, then my comments here are irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong, the place looks like a fun party atmosphere. I’m no prude, I just think anywhere with a kids menu should reduce the vulgarity until after 8−9pm. We were there at 5pm for dinner. The food was also sub-​par with the Mac and Cheese (kids) being watery and straight from a box and the steak sandwich was all fat/​gristle. Service was also slow. We saw our waitress three times, once to take our order, once to bring out food, and once to ask how everything was (I found her to ask for my bill). I give two stars since my expectations were off base, misled by the concierge. After a day of drinking on a boat with buddies, this place would be great! But not for a family lakeside dinner with my kids.

My wife and I are frequent visitors to backwater jacks. Our experiences have been good until today. We were seated for dinner and our waiter came to take drink and dinner orders. He promptly brought my drink but not my wife’s. He then disappeared for 25 minutes. When he returned I asked about her drink and he said it should be up and would check. 15 minutes later he brought her a half (at best) glass of wine. My wife had ordered a meal with a salad. He never brought the salad and the food he did bring was cold. It was a very frustrating experience on a very nice evening.

This experience was top to bottom bad. We had a large group of 12 hungry and thirsty guys. After checking in at the hostess stand we went to the bar for a few beers. The staff was accommodating and put together several tables outside to seat us. Little did we know this would be the last positive interaction we’d have.
Melissa greeted us at the table and took drink and appetizer orders. The service between drinks and the delivery of the apps was almost 40 min, not even a refill of water made its way over. The place was busy but had plenty of open tables and staff standing around. After the 40 min wait entrees were ordered. 30 min later the waitress returns to the table, not to deliver the food we ordered but to advise that a pork loin and 3 of the pasta dishes ordered were no longer available???
Why did this take 30 min to figure out? Melissa «forgot» to ring the order in. How the hell do you take an order from a 12 top and forget to ring it in? This is unacceptable. When talking with the manager her response was one of disbelief. «It’s her fault, will be happy to fire your order and only charge you half, will take the other half out of Melissa’s pay.» WTF! Your a manager, when ish hits the fan you take ownership as a team and don’t bus drive your staff. Your response should be, «I’m sorry, we made a mistake, I wish to apologize on behalf of Backwater Jacks. What can we do to make this right». As its now 930pm we decide its best to pay for what we’ve had, (drinks and apps) cancel the entrees and go.
For anyone who wishes to get a sense of how Backwater Jacks is, I’d recommend giving yourself multiple paper cuts… between your toes.

After waiting nearly a full period of Blues hockey waiting on a table we were sat at a half dirty table only to have to use the table paper towels to wipe the table down (due to excessive stickiness). Appetizers took quite a while but the at least showed up. Which is better than the waitress. After waiting an additional 30 min to order we were finally told 40 minutes later that not only were they out of items but she also «forgot» to place our entrée orders. The managers handling of the situation was worse than the waitresses. We finally settled our appetizer bill and left.
I will never return here.

Love Backwater Jacks! They Built a brand new building and an enormous kitchen!!! Parking is awesome now! They Tripled the parking area, A must see at the Lake!

For Lake of the Ozarks, in terms of bars– BW Jacks deserves a 5 star IMO! I used to work in a position where I worked with many bars at the lake… Backwater Jacks is one that will stick with me as a favorite.
Food– Easily one of my favs for food. Priced very fairly. You can get appetizers like giant jalepeno poppers at $ 1.50 or their Famous grouper fingers for ~$ 8 – 9 (do not pass up the grouper fingers). I ate here on the reg.
Drinks– THE NUMBER ONE PINA COLADA AT THE LAKE. this is not an overstatement, like i’ve said in my other reviews, ive tried a piña colada at every bar. BW JACKS makes their own Piña colada mix in small batches. I have no words to describe it besides cakey, delicious, sweet, rummy, coconutty. Great texture, you will feel all the coconut chunks in the mix, and it is NOT like a frosty consistency, more like a slushy. way too easy to drink (and def add a floater for a $ 1.00!!!)
Staff– In addition to having BW Jacks food/​drink withdraws, I especially miss seeing the staff. You won’t find a harder working staff at the lake in my opinion (though all bartenders at the lake are such hard workers!!!) Servers are some of the sweetest people, fast, efficient, and a lot of them are siblings if I recall correctly?
The bartenders are the best too… seriously. They all seem like they are best friends, I think a lot of them live together and travel together so you can tell they have a great work flow. Daily, you will see them busting their ass sweating like crazy and still getting your drinks out in like a under a minute.
JJ is the tall, buff, red-​head slinging drinks behind the bar and he is named the #1 bartender at the lake, and the title is well-​deserved!
A large venue, with indoor and outdoor seating, and two bars. Live music is common and is strategically placed so theres a little dancing pit, and you and your table can still converse w/​o having to completely scream.
Again, love this bar. can’t say enough happy things about it and looking forward to many visits again this summer.
Highly recommend and Topsider Nightclub is next door if you would like to continue the party after-​hours

This is a typical lakeside bar, decent food, decent atmosphere, and they have the typical fried potato salad the construction site has.

No stars… previous meals with a small group has earned maybe around four stars. But now, ZERO. I am trying to arrange for a group of 20 or so friends to gather one last time before winter. I want to check signals with this place to make sure it didn’t conflict with others who may be dining there.
IM sent, no response
Phone call several days later: put on hold for over six minutes, I hung up.
Phone call again later that day, mid afternoon: was told they were busy, they took my name/​ph number and said they’d return my call. 24 hrs later, still no return call.
Guess they have enough business and don’t need our groups $‘s.
That’s fine, plenty of other dining places in the Lake area who will be happy to serve us. This place has poor poor business practices. Surprised they’ve stayed open this long.

Some days ya just wish Unilocal allowed ½ stars.
This is probably a 1.5 star
I guess if your on the water and need prepared, served food this place would be an option.
By car? I’d think there may be better options.
There is outdoor seating at (not on) the lake.
We were in for a late lunch.
Service was friendly but not sanitary minded.
They removed our plastic, disposable cups for water refills multiple times by grabbing the tops of the cups with bare hands. Took them to… who knows? Outside of our view.
All 4 of us felt our food was frozen or trucked in.
Nothing was fresh.
The chips and salsa included salsa from a jar and stale chips.
Funny enough, we fed a lot of our food selections to the carp.
There are stairs leading down to the lake where a multitude of carp wait for leftovers.
I wouldn’t recommend this selection, unless you were grabbing a quick drink while on the lake.
We tried it but won’t be back.

Food was great. Recommend crab rangoon, thin sliced roast beef sandwich and fried green beans. Very impressed. We actually went there to try their poppers but they were out. Only part that disappointed us. We will be returning. The building wasn’t great but the view was nice.

Best restaurant on the water! Bartenders Girdy and Tawna are AMAZING!!! Servers Tyler and Stephanie are awesome too.
Try the backend grouper sandwich with fried potato salad. For a refreshing drink, try their Pain In The Ass.
A great place to go to enjoy live music, great food and a great atmosphere.

Great place right on the water. Thursday night specials were incredible: .99cent oysters .75 cent shrimp and .39 cent wings. The two of us ate our fill for $ 22. Oysters were fresh and wings cooked crispy though quite light on the sauce; they were only .39 cents so can’t really complain. Live music on the waterfront really made for a great night. Would definitely go back… On a Thursday.
PS– neither if us got the French fries, but they looked SO good! Crispy on the outside with those little fried bits… Yum! Will get them next time.
Hostess was clearly exhausted from the crowds by the time we got there, but she seated us quickly. Server was on the spot but not lingering. Great job!
Definitely check this place out if you’re in the area.

This place is hoppin’ on the 17 mile marker.
We ate here for dinner on a Friday night and they were packed. I had the BLT and we got a few apps and other meals around the table. I enjoyed my BLT with green bean fries (something a little different) but the service was slow. It was like pulling teeth to get a refill so they bring you out a pitcher with cups for water.
The next night we came by to listen to the live music and ordered a few appetizers again. The jalapeño poppers were NOT my cup of tea. Holy spicy. They were by far the hottest poppers I’ve ever had. The stuffed mushrooms, wings and buffalo chicken strips were quite good. The nachos left me wanting something a little better.
All in all, this place is pretty legit. Don’t come for something «quick» because it’s an experience with the atmosphere.
Enjoy!